Treating people as things

As a student of history for some years now, I regret to say not much surprises or shocks me. So I wasn't shocked to learn from the last episode that Lady Fawkland's clients could buy the virginity of a child as a cure for the pox. Baby girls are still being raped in South Africa today by men who believe it will cure them of AIDS. In modern times, this is blamed on ignorance, but surely - even though science was not advanced back then - Lady Fawkland's upper class customers were well-educated men? The fault lies, I think, in the willingness of some people to treat other human beings as objects for their own gratification. Various writers, such as Martin Buber, Susan Howatch and Terry Pratchett, have identified this tendency as a great source of human suffering.